The time of my life

I am coming to understand that this journey towards weightlessness is a whole lot more involved than a simple number on the scale.  I am finding dark, musty corners of my soul - secret places where nobody looked, especially me.  The closer I look, the more I find.  This is really not all that unusual, I don't think.  I'm not saying that I am rotten to the core.  Not at all.  I am an intelligent, kind, loving person with a off beat (and mostly off color) sense of humor.  But I am flawed.

That said, I, like most other people, am in a fight for my life.  I refuse to lie down and accept my issues as "just the way it is".  The way my body reacts to certain stimuli is something I have to accept because I can't change it.  Lord knows, if it could have been changed, it would have been done by now.  I've certainly had enough practice! I have to accept that, in the presence of sugar or wine, my demons will rise up and scream to be fed "More More More!!".  But that doesn't mean that I get to lie down and wallow in the hopelessness of it.  No, I have choices.  I always have choices.  And I am not hopeless.

I have spent my earlier life simply reacting.  I was in a constant state of "duck and cover".  It didn't occur to me that I had any personal power whatsoever.  I never considered having a plan or an ambition or a goal.  As a result, my life continued in circles, from one bad situation to another.  Sure I found some sunshine along the way, but I was convinced that the depth of the goodness of something was in direct proportion to the agony it caused.  I mean, if it hurt this badly I must really love it, right?  Well, no, not right.

At the age of 55, I assumed control of my life.  Once my body got used to clean eating, the depression I had lived with my whole life began to lift.  The clouds parted and I allowed the sunshine into my soul without labeling it as "boring".  I began to make a plan.  I began to look at myself and start to clean up the messes that I had made.  Sort of like walking into your house one day and realizing that if the police came in unannounced they would think you had been ransacked.  So I started to sort and dust and put things away.  But I never looked in that closet.  You know the one - the one where you just open the door, toss stuff in and quickly shut it before everything else you have tossed in there comes spilling out.

Well, now, at the ripe old age of 61, I have decided to start cleaning out that closet.  And, oh my, the crap I have in there!  So many things that probably served me at one time but no longer do.  So much stuff that doesn't fit, doesn't help and isn't necessary to keep.  My closet reminds me of an episode of Hoarders - full of the junk that I have refused to let go of for so long that the rafters are starting to crack.  So I am dragging it out, piece by piece, little by little, and looking at it.  Deciding if it should stay or if it should go.  And with every item that I pull out and allow the light of day into, my life becomes a little less heavy.  I little more weightless.

Blessings on our journeys, folks.  It is, quite literally, the time of our lives.